Highland’s Consultants
A Unique Blend of Knowledge & Experience
Our firm is populated by professionals that share a common passion for advancing new, more meaningful ways to support client plans and are quick to reject ineffectual approaches that only remain due to industry lethargy and inertia. Several of our core team members started their careers as consulting actuaries and we take great pride in our ability to distill complex concepts into meaningful, client-accessible terms.
Our professionals each have over 20 years of direct experience. Highland’s consultants include 3 consulting actuaries that spent years designing plans and communicating complex concepts. Two of our staff had client-side responsibility for over $3 billion of plan assets and another has designed and delivered large-scale institutional products and services for one of the largest service providers in the industry.
William S. Small, ASA, CIMA
Principal
Bill Small is a co-founder & Principal of Highland Capital Advisors, LLC., a Registered Investment Advisory firm.
Prior to forming Highland, Bill was a Director for Merrill Lynch's Retirement Capital Strategies Group. In this capacity, Bill managed a multi-office team of Consultants and Relationship Managers that advised some of Merrill's largest plan sponsors (over $50 Billion in combined plan assets). He was also responsible for the group's business development efforts, and for setting the strategic direction for the defined benefit business.
Bill has extensive experience with all forms of qualified & non-qualified retirement programs and related financial management matters.
Bill received his Bachelors Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Central Washington University. Bill is a Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA), an Associate in the Society of Actuaries (ASA), an Enrolled Actuary (EA), a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries (MAAA) and has held a variety of security licenses.
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Richard C. Wyman
Principal
Rick Wyman is a co-founder & Principal of Highland Capital Advisors, LLC., a Registered Investment Advisory firm.
Prior to joining Highland, Rick was the Senior Vice President, CFO and a Principal of Wurts & Associates. Rick has over 22 years of investment experience working with institutional investors primarily located up and down the West Coast. While at Wurts & Associates, Rick worked with a broad range of clients, including endowments and foundations, Taft-Hartley plans, public funds, hospital and corporate plans. Rick continues to work with clients to develop and implement investment strategies including asset allocation studies, manager searches, performance measurement and various technical projects. Rick has worked with many of the regions most recognizable firms.
Prior to his full-time involvement as a Consultant at Wurts & Associates, Mr. Wyman was responsible for all the mutual fund and separate manager search activity and pioneered the manager search process used by the firm's in house research team. He has personally conducted over 250 investment manager and mutual fund searches on behalf of clients.
Rick earned his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Accounting from Ohio Wesleyan University. Rick is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA-inactive), a member of the Washington State Society of Certified Public Accountants (WSCPA), a member of the Western Pension Conference and has held a variety of security licenses.
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Randall L. Doser, FSA, CFA
Senior Consultant
Randall Doser joined Highland Capital Advisors in February of 2011. A Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (FSA), Chartered Financial Analyst charter holder (CFA), an Enrolled Actuary (inactive) and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries, he has a strong background in the mathematics of finance and extensive experience in the legal and accounting aspects of benefit plan liabilities and assets.
Before joining Highland, Randall was Vice President at Compass Advisors, LLC for 9 years where he consulted to institutional and high net worth investors and provided technical expertise to the company's fund of funds affiliate. Prior to Compass, he spent three years as the Manager of Benefit Investments inside the Treasury department of Freightliner LLC, overseeing the company's $900 million portfolio of pension, 401(k) and retiree medical assets.
Prior to Freightliner, he spent three years with the consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide in their Portland and Minneapolis offices doing retiree medical and defined benefit retirement plan valuation and design for employers ranging in size from 12 to 60,000+ employees. Previous to 1995 he was an associate consultant with Howard Johnson & Company in Portland, Oregon doing defined contribution and defined benefit retirement plan design, administration and valuation for small to mid size companies. Randall graduated in 1990 with highest scholarship from Oregon State University with a B.S. in Mathematical Sciences.
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Clint Benson
Regional Director of Business Development
Clint joined Highland from Arnerich Massena and Associates where he led the creation of new client relationships. For over 11 years, he worked with trustees and boards responsible for the oversight of corporate, non-profit and public sector retirement programs.
Clint works closely with fiduciary investors and their professional advisors - attorneys, auditors and administrators - and has long been actively involved with the Western Pension and Benefits Conference and the National Association of Government Defined Contribution Administrators (NAGDCA).
Previously, he served corporate clients through commercial real estate investment brokerage, leasing and property management. As vice president at CB Richard Ellis, an international commercial real estate firm, he focused on corporate real estate leasing and investment sales. Clint holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Oregon State University and lives in Northeast Portland with his wife and children.
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David S. Rowe, CIMA, CPC, QPA, QKA
Senior Consultant
Dave is a Senior Consultant with Highland Capital Advisors, LLC a Registered Investment Advisory firm.
Prior to joining Highland, Dave held leadership positions with Northern Trust and Prudential Financial where he directed Northern Trust's defined contribution consulting practice, was responsible for investment and total retirement outsourcing business development in the Western U.S. and managed a white-label total retirement outsourcing solution for Frank Russell Trust Company. He also held investment advisory positions at Kibble & Prentice and Arthur J. Gallagher.
Dave's experience provides valuable perspective to grow and protect wealth through prudent standards of conduct.
Dave received his mathematics degree from the University of Washington and earned his Certified Investment Management Analyst designation from the Investments & Wealth Institute (IWI) formerly known as the Investment Management Consultants Association (IMCA). Dave also earned his Certified Pension Consultant (CPC), Qualified Plan Administrator (QPA) and Qualified 401(k) Administrator (QKA) designations from the American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries (ASPPA).
In addition to holding a variety of securities and insurance licenses, Dave is the former President of the ASPPA Benefits Council of the Great Northwest, former Vice-President and Finance Committee Chair of Washington's National Park Fund and former Board Member and Program-Chair of the Seattle Chapter of the Western Pension & Benefits Conference.
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David G. Mann, CPFA, AIF®, QPA, QKA
Senior Consultant
David is a Senior Consultant with Highland Capital Advisors, LLC having joined the firm in the fall of 2017.
Prior to joining Highland, David was Director of Account Management for ClearPoint Financial where he was responsible for retirement plan investments, plan design strategies, fiduciary guidance, asset allocation evaluation and participant education programs. He has also worked with leading national record-keeper firms such as Prudential and Principal guiding them in special projects leadership, marketing, service and sales management roles.
Serving retirement plans since 1995 David has experience from both the advisor and record-keeper perspective providing valuable expertise to individuals and organizations through prudent standards of conduct.
David received his Bachelor of Arts degree in marketing from Loras College and a Master of Business Administration from Keller Graduate School of Management in Chicago. He has also earned his Certified Plan Fiduciary Advisor (CPFA), Qualified Pension Administrator (QPA), Qualified 401(k) Plan Administrator (QKA) from the American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries (ASPPA) and the Accredited Investment Fiduciary (AIF) designation from the Center of Fiduciary Studies. David has held a variety of securities and insurance licenses.
David currently serves on the board of directors of the ASPPA Benefits Council of the Great Northwest as the Continuing Education chair.
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